


Cucco Soup for the Zelda

by wordbending



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Bad Puns, Based on a Tumblr Post, F/F, Linkle Mod, Spoilers, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:27:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28743984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordbending/pseuds/wordbending
Summary: Abruptly, I smelled something, and I looked up from the ground to see Linkle herself, summoned as if by my thoughts, her bright blue knight’s uniform soaked with rainwater. She was staring at me, not smiling, and in her hands was a bowl of soup.“I am not hungry, Linkle,” I lied, pushing the soup away. “But thank you.”Linkle looked, rarely, disappointed, but then she perked up, a small upturn of her lips that almost passed for a smile crossing her face.“Try it. It’ll make you feel... soup-er,” she said, her voice almost emotionless, as always.-----Linkle offers Zelda some warmth and comfort (and soup.)
Relationships: Link & Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Linkle (Legend of Zelda)/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 48





	Cucco Soup for the Zelda

**Author's Note:**

  * For [voltfruits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voltfruits/gifts).



> Based on [this post](https://voltfruits.tumblr.com/post/639983717763465216/) by voltfruits on Tumblr/AO3!
> 
> Also heavily based on the [Linkle mod](https://gamebanana.com/skins/164945) for Breath of the Wild, which I play with so it's canon as far as I'm concerned.
> 
> Note that if you're like me and haven't finished this game still, there are spoilers for two memories and parts of the ending.

It had begun to rain, as it often did in Hyrule. Even if it hadn’t, I was already soaked from having entered the pool in the Spring of Power to pray to the statue of the Goddess Hylia.

It is said, buried deep in the legends I have pored over many, many times, that the Goddess Hylia was once a woman named Zelda - an ordinary girl, given an extraordinary destiny, an unfathomable purpose. 

There is no such destiny for me.

Link - Linkle, to use her proper name - had carried me out of the pool and thrown a blanket of sheep’s wool around my body. The sheep’s wool itched against my skin, bare except for the simple ceremonial robes I wore on my body, but I could hardly notice. All I felt were the tears cascading down my cheeks as I sobbed and sobbed.

It was rare that I cried so hard, or for so long, but it was not rare that I did not receive comfort for it. My father, even if he wasn’t always occupied with the duties of royalty, considered tears a sign of weakness from me - beneath me, beneath anyone who bore the title of Princess Zelda. It was my nursemaids who came the closest to comforting me when I bruised my knee exploring the castle, or had to be found after getting lost looking for frogs and flowers, but I learned soon not to cry at all.

Linkle was... different, even putting aside that, as she had told me once in confidence, she had been born a boy but hoped one day to live as a woman. But I did not expect her to offer comfort either. She was a woman of few words, who seemed out of place and uncomfortable around other people. She could play the role of dashing heroine, or charming knight, but it did not fit her, no more than being a boy had. Expecting Linkle to offer me a shoulder to cry on was like expecting a Goron to swim.

Abruptly, I smelled something, and I looked up from the ground to see Linkle herself, summoned as if by my thoughts, her bright blue knight’s uniform soaked with rainwater. She was staring at me, not smiling, and in her hands was a bowl of soup.

“I am not hungry, Linkle,” I lied, pushing the soup away. “But thank you.”

Linkle looked, rarely, disappointed, but then she perked up, a small upturn of her lips that almost passed for a smile crossing her face.

“Try it. It’ll make you feel... soup-er,” she said, her voice almost emotionless, as always.

I didn’t laugh.

“Well, it’s not a broth-er to me,”Linkle said, still in the same flat tone, just barely readable as playful. “If you won’t eat it, I’ll just let you stew _.”_

“Linkle, really. I am hungry neither for your food nor your wordplay.”

Yet, in spite of that, I had stopped crying. When I looked at Linkle’s blank, unsmiling expression, I somehow saw doubt.

“How can I eat, Linkle?” I said, in reply to an expression I could not see. I raised my hands to my chest, placing a palm over my breast. “No matter how good your cooking, it cannot restore this heart.”

I lowered my hand.

“Perhaps my father was right. Do you remember what he said, Linkle? ‘Do you know how the gossip mongers refer to you? They are out there at this moment whispering amongst themselves that you are the heir to a throne of nothing. Nothing but failure.’” I laughed, a bitter laugh that felt foreign to my throat. “He barely hides how he sees me. Gossip mongers! The truth is it is he who sees me as nothing but a failure. A failure to his Kingdom, to the throne... as a daughter.”

Tears, once again, fell from my cheeks, lost in the rain.

“And, worst of all, he is right. I have failed him. I have failed everyone. And soon, for my failure, Calamity Ganon shall destroy the entire world.”

I felt a hand clap my shoulder, and I looked up once again into Linkle’s face. Her emotionless stare was now a steely gaze, one of fire and determination, and she raised a fist in front of herself, clenched it, and then unclenched it before raising it towards her heart.

“I understand,” I said. “The Champions will not fail. _You_ will not fail.” I lowered my head once again. “But I have already failed. I am not the princess blessed with the power of the Goddess. I am not even an ordinary girl, granted extraordinary destiny. I am nothing. I am no one.”

Link continued to stare, looking more out of her depth than ever. She lowered her hand from my shoulder, and I immediately stood up, the wool blanket falling off me as I began to walk past her to the makeshift tent she had set up.

“Linkle...” I said as I walked past her, and then stopped, my voice hardening. “Linkle, as the Princess, I command you: do not bother me again. We will continue our journey tomorrow.”

And I crawled into the tent and laid down on the bedding, without even a blanket to cover myself.

I am regretful to say that I slept.

* * *

“Linkle... the heroine of Hyrule.” My voice nearly broke. “May I ask... do you really remember me?”

* * *

I do not know when, or why, it happened. It was not long after the ghosts of my father - and the Champions - had vanished. I had felt nothing then, not even relief. Even as I had faced Linkle, beautiful and resplendent in the form she had so wanted in life, I had felt very little. Even my joy, my gratitude, great as they should have been, were dulled.

But then Linkle took me, on horseback, through the ruins of what once had been Hyrule. The fortresses, the towns, the villages, filled with corpses of Guardians, some newly silenced, some a century old. Even then, I felt nothing - after all, I had seen this devastation through Linkle’s eyes, had I not?

It was not until nightfall, when we made camp once again, just like we had done so long ago, that the past hundred years all hit me at once.

“It is all gone,” I said quietly, and Linkle looked at me, not with a start, but with what I recognized as surprise nonetheless. It was the first words I had spoken since I had greeted her at Hyrule Castle. “All these homes... all these people... all of them are gone. The Champions... my father... they are all dead.”

I hugged myself tightly, as if it would make the growing phantom of dread within me disappear.

“I did this. I did this. Ganon caused this disaster, but I failed to stop it.” I looked up at Linkle, desperation in my eyes. “All your efforts... and you only fixed what I... what I...”

And I started to sob once again.

“What I had broken!”

I felt a strong arm clasp my shoulder, but I did not need to look up this time. Linkle, her narrower, more feminine face so familiar but so different, had crouched down in front of me and was now staring directly into my eyes. She was smiling, as she always smiled now.

And what her smile said to me was this: “no.”

“Linkle...” I said, softly, raising my hand and placing it on hers before gently pushing it away. “I do not understand why you, of all people, continue to stand by my side. You vowed to protect Hyrule. And it was I who destroyed it.”

“It’s not destroyed.”

I opened my mouth. It was the first time I’d heard Linkle’s voice, face to face. She sounded completely different, but the tone, the flat affect, the burning confidence that what she said was incontrovertibly true... it was unmistakable.

I lowered my gaze. “How I wish that were true.”

In response, Linkle’s smile faded, just barely enough to notice. She stood up and walked away, and I felt, for one horrible moment, that she had given up on me, just as my father had.

But then I saw that she was gathering her horse, a mighty brown steed she had named Epona. I had gawked at the name - but I supposed it was no stranger than our own. To think that a horse, too, could have a destiny. Perhaps even she had succeeded where I had failed.

“Come with me,” Linkle said, extending her hand, and I climbed on.

We travelled to a nearby village, the village of Lurelin. Linkle did not speak, or point out anything. She simply rode through the town slowly, through passing, giggling children, past giggling young ladies looking blatantly at Linkle herself, past the elderly gawking at the sight of me. She passed by boats along the piers, by waving shopkeepers, by shouting sailors. As Epona trotted along, I expected a crowd to gather around the great heroine who had saved them all from my mistakes. No such thing occurred.

I still did not understand the message Linkle was trying to send, if there was one, or where we were going. I did not understand until Linkle stopped Epona in front of a shop, in front of which was a cooking pot, and climbed off. A tall, dark, heavyset fisherwoman stood nearby, and she took one look at Linkle and myself and grinned.

“You’re a lucky woman, stranger,” the fisherwoman said. “Linkle’s cooking is divine. She cooks so well, it’s enough to make you forgive your father!”

I looked at her doubtfully. I was almost annoyed - if I wasn’t in my right mind, I would have kicked the cooking pot over at the very suggestion that I would ever forgive my father. But I knew she was only being metaphorical, so I stayed silent.

Taking a heavy, jangling bag off of Epona’s side, Linkle reached into it, shuffled around, and then pulled out two jars of water. She poured them into the cooking pot, then reached into her bag and pulled out chunks of raw meat before, as she always did, throwing them unceremoniously into the wok. She salted the meat with rock salt and added a bottle of goat’s milk to the mixture before she stood patiently over it, hands on her hips as it cooked. I watched as the ingredients simmered and smoked, the smell of cooked Cucco wafting through the air.

After a minute, Linkle took a bowl and a ladle and collected some of the broth. Then, with a soft smile, she handed it to me.

“Linkle, please. You...”

“You don’t have to drink it,” Linkle said. “It’s your choice.”

I looked at the soup, and I looked at Linkle’s smile, and I listened to my quaking stomach, and I could not deny them any longer. I took the soup, and I raised it to my lips, and I drank.

It was beyond comprehension. Somehow, from those meagre ingredients, Linkle had created perfection. The meat added spice and flavor to the broth, but not in overwhelming qualities, and the soup itself had a rich, creamy texture. It was warm and filling in a way that expanded outward throughout my entire body, but most of all, it sent me back to my childhood days, when my nursemaids had cooked me meals, when I ate happily, when my father still smiled at me. 

I continued to drink, and drink, but the more I drank, the more something else began to well up within me, rising up and up and up until it all came out at once. My hands shook, my eyes watered, and then I dropped the soup bowl and started to cry - not loud, heaving sobs, but silent tears.

The moment I did, Linkle was there, and she did something she had never once done before. She wrapped me in an embrace, resting her head against my chin. I embraced her back, crying even harder.

“Linkle...” I said, voice breaking. “Linkle, I...”

Voices began to speak over us, and I looked around with a start to see a crowd of people had formed.

“Excuse me, Miss, are you alright?”

“Hey, why are you crying?”

“Whoa, are you OK?”

At last, I understood why she had taken me here. The message was as obvious as the moon that now hung overhead.

The world had not been destroyed by Calamity Ganon. And nor had it been reborn.

It had survived, and it would always survive. Even if there had never been a Hero - or a Heroine - even if there had never been a Princess - or a Prince - the world would live on. There was no magical destiny, chaining us to fate. There was only people just like these - living, surviving, carrying on with their lives, unheroic, in all their glory and inglory. And that is what Linkle and I were. That was the truth of destiny: it was made, not fated.

Unsurprisingly, I had not, as a result of Linkle’s soup, forgiven my father. I doubted I ever would, and some small part of me doubted I even wished to. But Linkle had shown me something I was so much more grateful for.

I took a deep breath and stopped crying, but I did not stop embracing Linkle, even to wipe my eyes. It was a long period of silence before I finally broke away from her and brushed my face with the back of my hands.

“Thank you, Linkle,” I said to her with a smile, and she smiled back.


End file.
